Eating, making and cooking with cheese

Roasted grapes and ricotta

Silky sweet flesh poised between the sharp tartness of skin and seed, New Zealand table grapes grace us for a short time. A fleeting moment, their brief local season reminds me of hot childhood days in the Hamilton, plump ripe grapes fecund on the vine.

I loved popping out the center and carefully avoiding the bitter astringency of the cracked pip.

So if you see them grab them quickly, they make a wonderfully stylish and simple starter. Great for after work drinks and looking way more glam than the 10 minutes it takes to whip it up.

If you can’t get local grapes use the red or purple ones, they’ll look more dramatic against the ricotta.

I used Zany Zeus ricotta and crunchy Acme bread toasted on the barbeque. I had the grill on for the later course of butterflied lamb, so it made sense. You can just toast under a grill although the smokiness played counterpoint to the clean milky ricotta and the fragranced sweetness of the thyme roasted grapes.

3 thoughts on “Roasted grapes and ricotta ”

Don’t forget that Saturday 22nd April is World RAW Cheese Apprecation Day and there are only 3 Raw Cheese makers licensed by MPI to sell Raw Cheese in New Zealand: They are (from the top of the North Island heading South) Aroha Goat Cheese, Mt Eliza Cheese and Cwmglyn Farmhouse Cheese from Eketahuna.
They all need your support!!